Today we went to POSTECH in the morning for a tour of the campus, but I already discussed it in the blog post from yesterday. After lunch and a tour there, we visited the POSCO museum, called Park 1538. They had a few overstimulating and uninformative interactive videos/experiences followed by some honestly pretty good conventional museum exhibits. After those, we got to visit the actual steel mill, which as expected, did not allow photos. My impressions follow.

While driving through, alongside the road, there were these structures carrying a few dozen pipes, cables, etc… throughout the facility. One of them was water connection, usually a blue pipe, I imagine that there were various ones for power, perhaps gas, maybe telephone lines, I’m not sure what else. There were also a few hundred miles of conveyer belts carrying all sorts of raw materials and semi-finished and finished products to various places around the site, plus dozens of miles of roads and specialized vehicles to move products. While we drove through the factory, I was reminded of an Elon Musk quote in which he said (I’m doing some paraphrasing here) that designing the car was relatively easy; designing the factory to build the car was around a hundred times harder. I understood why when he said it, but I didn’t really internalize it until today. Forget the pyramids of Giza or the Colosseum, this is the real feat of humankind. Words cannot describe it, you really have to visit an integrated steel works and just take in the spectacle. Blast furnaces hundreds of feet tall, mountains of ore, crucibles thirty feet tall. Inside the hot rolling mill that we went to, the awe only increased. There’s something about being in a factory where the main source of light is a five-hundred ton glowing piece of metal that’s being slammed back and forth through giant steel machines, shedding red-hot layers of oxidized metal from the surface each time it hits the rollers, that makes you realize that humans and modern technology are actually pretty awesome. I’m the only Material Science student on the trip (I think), but I think everyone walked out of that plant with a bit more reverence for steel. And I realized that maybe I am interested in metallurgy after all, even if it’s just because I want the chance to go back to a steel mill again.

Anyways, in the evening we went out to the market for some snacks shopping (and for me, what turned out to be dinner). After two days of being in a coastal city and not eating seafood, I was craving it, and all along the streets of the market were these small stands that appeared to be selling fried fish (among other things). The language barrier was high, so I’m not sure exactly what I was eating, but one was definitely shrimp, and the other two seemed to be some kind of large dumpling and some kind of stuffed pepper. All deep fried in front of me, and eaten with a soy-sauce/chili dipping sauce. It was absolutely delicious, probably the best thing I had in Pohang over all three days, and I’m a bit dissapointed that I didn’t know about this beforehand, otherwise I would have sought it out and tried to eat more on the previous days.

Pohang in general is a pretty nice city, far removed from the bustling glamour of Seoul, but not so small that weekends or free time would feel like a bore. (Being close to the beaches of Ulsan and Busan population center helps a lot). I feel like it provided a more authentic Korean experience the same way that Marseille felt more authentic than Monaco (more on the manufactured culture experience in a future blog or essay). Seoul, maybe just because we were in Myeong-Dong, a very touristy area, felt very manufactured for the tourist experience. Pohang did not feel that way, mainly because it is inherently not a tourist destination. And that’s why I like it. I could imagine myself being here for longer than just a few days. Maybe next summer?

– Rohit